Astrobe is supported on a range of development boards using STMicroelectronics, Raspberry Pi and Xilinx devices. If you have not already chosen or designed your hardware we recommend starting with one of these boards for the quickest way to get up and running. The supported boards can be programmed from a Windows PC without any additional hardware.
The possible ways to program a particular development board depend on its capabilities:
- Mbed-enabled boards:
Connect the board to your PC via a USB port and it will appear as a removable drive. Select the Upload USB Drive command from the Astrobe Run menu. - RISC5 FPGA boards :
Connect the board to your PC via an RS232 or USB serial port. Select the Upload UART command from the Astrobe Run menu. - Other boards:
Astrobe creates BIN format files. These can be used with 3rd-party tools e.g. ST-Link (STM) and abin2uf2 (RP2040).
The Run command on the Astrobe Project menu opens a terminal window on your PC. You can use this window to send and receive text to / from your program on the microcontroller using functions from the Astrobe library modules In and Out. Diagnostic runtime error messages are also displayed in this window. The messages identify the line number and name name of the source code file where the error occurred enabling you to quickly pinpoint the source of the problem.
Supported Microcontroller Families
Astrobe can be used to develop software for the following microcontroller families:
Cortex-M0/M0+
- RP2040
- STM32F070
- STM32F091
- STM32L152 (Using Cortex-M0 code)
Cortex-M3
- STM32L152 (Using Cortex-M3 code)
- STM32F207
Cortex-M4
- STM32F303
- STM32F334
- STM32F429
- STM32L432
Cortex-M7
- STM32F746
- STM32F767
RISC5 FPGA
- Artix-7
- Spartan-7
Development Boards
Astrobe is supported on the following development boards. The prices are approximate.
Cortex-M0/M0+ Price Raspberry Pi Pico* $US 4 STM32 Nucleo-F070RB $US 12 STM32 Nucleo-F091RC $US 12 * Using the Oberon-RTK 3rd-party libraries and tools
Cortex-M3 Price STM32 Nucleo-L152RE $US 15 STM32 Nucleo-F207ZG $US 26
Cortex-M4 Price STM32 Nucleo-F303RE $US 12 STM32 Nucleo-F303ZE $US 21 STM32 Nucleo-F334R8 $US 12 STM32 Nucleo-F429ZI $US 26 STM32 Nucleo-L432KC $US 12
Cortex-M7 Price STM32 Nucleo-F746ZG $US 26 STM32 Nucleo-F767ZI $US 26
Digilent FPGA RISC5 Price Academic Price Cmod A7-35T $US 89 Arty A7-35T $US 129 Basys 3 $US 149 $US 112 Arty A7-100T $US 249 Nexys A7-100T $US 265 $US 199 Cmod S7-25 $US 69 Arty S7-25 $US 99 Arty S7-50 $US 129
User Manuals
Astrobe includes library modules which contain many of the register / peripheral definitions for the supported microcontroller families. Refer to the relevant STMicrocontroller User manuals for full operational details:
- RM0033 STM32F207xx Reference manual
- RM0038 STM32L1xxx Reference manual
- RM0091 STM32F0xx Reference manual
- RM0316 STM32F303xx Reference manual
- RM0364 STM32F334xx Reference manual
- RM0385 STM32F75xxx and STM32F74xxx Reference manual
- RM0393 STM32L4x2 Reference manual
- RM0410 STM32F76xxx and STM32F77xxx Reference manual